Thursday, 15 December 2011

A directors commentary is normally a a piece of footage of the director explaining his intentions of his media product. The explain why they included some aspects of their product. They are useful as thy let the audience see why the director made the product the way he did and shows them his thoughts behind it. Here is a good example of a director commentary from the programme being human.

Directors commentaries often use voiceovers on clips from the product they are talking about. This shows what they are talking about, making it easier for the audience to understand how they did something etc.

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

in what ways does your media products use, develop or chellenge the forms and conventions of real music products?

our media product uses the forms and conventions of real music products, with our input on graffiti conforming to a high proportion of what hip-hop is about as well as rapping which our artist is obviously doing throughout the music video as well as supplementary clips of skateboarding graffiti and basketball. Another way our music products conform to the conventional music products with our digipak. we have included very general but key points to make our digipak more professional and conform to real music products.the things we included were; a barcode, the name of our artist, the name of the album, artist record label. all of these are very key parts of a digipak to help it look professional. on our blog we have researched into real media products and analyzed them in comparison to ours: chiddy bang - opposites to adults was one of the songs i personally analyzed and it included skateboarding so to conform to its genre characteristics we had an input of skateboarding in our own music video. There are a lot of elements of hip hop that arn't included in hip-hop music such as skateboarding, graffiti and break-dancing. we thought we would attempt to develop hip hop for more than it is sterotypically knownfor sowe added the skateboarding and graffiti as both are very urban activities.

how effective is your main products to your ancillary texts?

our main products being our music video and our digipak conformed very well together as we ket the urban atmosphere throughout our products enforcing a strong bond between the two which hopefully results in an effective product. we have tried to keep everything related such as the graffiti element running the entire way through the music video. the graffiti on the wall in our magazine advert and the element of drawing on our c.d. cover which all work well and that element runs smoothly throughout our products avoiding any distortion or confusion throughout our music video. we attempted to look like we would be rapping this song so we made sure that our appearance was right to conform to stereotypical hip-hop music video's such as people with hats on, microphones what you see in the real music videos which is what we wanted to communicate to the audience of our artist was the urban hip-hop conventional rapper. we added a darker effect on our magazine advert to help communicate what image we intended for our audience and we one that by increasing the contrast or final cut pro and burning in parts of the wall to make the artist seem very strong and dominating.

what have you learned from audience feedback?

we got feedback on our music video from another group and learned that we have variety of different shot within our music video, which is what we wanted to aim for to avoid any boring parts, we wanted to keep the audience interested and engaged. Also the skateboarding was said to be a great input, we wanted to include this because we feel if the audeience were getting bored and then they see some impresive skateboarding it will re-engage them into the music video and make them want to want to watch more.
Lip syncing was said to ne well acheived. i think this is the one we all feared most as the song is very fastpaacedwith fast rapping but we done a lyrics analysis whichhelped alot as we were able to look overthe lryics before fiming it. the effects we used such as speed altering black and white also alot of colour corrector which helped take our video from a damp wet and grey scene to a sunny and bright scene, using this effect had a great input into the quality of our music video.

how did you ue new media technoligies in the construction + researching + planning + evaluation stages?

new media technoligies were greatly used throughout our media products such asfinalcut pro wasused throughoutthe entire projects as thisis what we used to edit our music video. For our research we mainly used new media technologies for example the internet, youtube was greatly used also tv adverts of up and coming hip hop artists promotion of their new albums and MTV as thats where we heard Chiddy Bang - Opposite Od Adults was being promoted on MTV. for the planningof our media products we used hd stills cameras to capture location recces of where possibly we might go to film. this helped us massively as it made the fil,ing process faster and more efficient also we used the internet (blogger) to blog all of our planning work and reseach, in the evaluation stages fo our project we helped other groups by evaluating their work as well as our own, this helped them because then they knew what they needed to do to improve on their project. we done this by posting a comment on their music vdieo giving them advide and the good points they done.

Today is the final deadline for our verbal commentary on our music production and ancillary texts. The editing has gone fairly smoothly with a few exceptions such as, the key frames. The issues involved the motion paths being distorted and not correctly working with the commentary.
Some ideas that have been well edited are the skating videos along with the commentary on screen. As a group we are very pleased with this concep.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Whilst creating our media products we tried to conform to the typical conventions of the Hip-Hop genre as much as possible. We didn't really challenge any of the conventions as we wanted to make it strong and clearly Hip-Hop genre promotional package. Throughout all three we kept a strong theme of graffiti running through. Graffiti is a convention largely used within Hip-Hop and can be seen in most music videos, magazine adverts or CD/DVD covers which are created for the artists within the genre. Our music video included a lot of strong imagery of graffiti, skateboarding and basketball. These are urban sports which are repeatedly used within the Hip-Hop genre. The colouring we have used on our music video conforms to the usual conventions of music videos from the Hip-Hop genre. On the skateboarding and basketball shots we have given it a slightly yellowish tint which creates a kind of 'old school' feel to it. On the graffiti shots the colours are bright and striking which we didn't really want to change so we tried to keep them all as bright as possible to keep the audience attracted to the video.
The magazine advert conformed to other magazine adverts from the Hip-Hop genre with one striking image and minimal text. The image we used had an urban feel with graffiti included (following the theme through) but it also has trees in the background which puts a twist on the usual urban imagery you would see. This is a slight challenge to the conventions and it links to the song title 'Amongst the Madness'. The DVD cover has cartoon people on it which links back to the initial theme, graffiti. We have continued this by putting the text on the cover in a brightly coloured graffiti font. To conform with the conventions we have also included a barcode and record label.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our products all have one theme running through them, graffiti. We have tried to incorperate this in a strong way in all three products. Our music video has shots of various graffiti throughout the whole thing, this creates a strong urban feel and you can see clearly that it is a product from the Hip-Hop genre. Our DVD cover has cartoon people on it which links to the graffiti theme well but I think that if we had managed to finish it completely we could of made the link stronger by putting in bright colours into the images, for example we were planning on making the characters hats a bright colour to match the graffiti text. Our magazine advert was probably the product I thought looked the most our of place within the combination. This is because it has a less urban feel to it and is harder to pick out the graffiti than it is in the other products, where it is much more clear. Overall I do think they work well together but I think there is room for improvement.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our audience feedback overall was very positive and they didn't seem to have picked up on many problems. However, they all picked up on the same problems. The problem they all seemed to think our video had was that there should have been more of a focus on the artist rapping. They also thought that we could have tightened up the lip-syncing a bit. Lastly they thought that the performance done by Jake could have been made a bit more convincing. From this feedback we have learnt that we should have added more close-up/medium shots of the artist rapping. This would make you remember the artist better. We should also get Jake to get more into the performance and not hold back. Finally in certain areas of the video make sure that the lip-syncing is perfect.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We mainly used four different pieces of software. These were FinalCut, Photoshop, Blogger and the internet. FinalCut was used to produce our music video and our commentary video. FinalCut was easy to use once you knew the basics and then you could build upon the basics to get a more professional looking video. FinalCut allowed us to portray all our ideas well and resulted in a professional and successful looking music video. We used Photoshop to create our DVD cover and magazine advert. Once again it was easy to use and it gives you all the tools to allow you to make your ideas become a successful product. However, with Photoshop me and Colin came accross a problem when near the end of the lesson in which we had to make our DVD cover, we lost all our work after Photoshop closed itself unexpectedly without saving the work we had done. We used Blogger to blog all our research that we got from the internet, blog our ideas and blog our final pieces. Blogger was helpful to use because it meant we could refer back to what we had done in the previous lesson easily and could go back to pieces of work done ages ago which might help in a recent piece of work. To film our video we used HD cameras which were easy to use but also gave us really good footage.

In whatways does yourmedia product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our mediaproducts uses and challenges forms and conventions in several different ways. For exampleour DVD cover has the record label on the back and down the spine, and the artists name is printed in a graffiti font.. This conforms to the normal conventions of the genre hip-hop and DVD covers for music videos. Graffiti is commonly associated with the genre. The main color of the DVD cover is black which isalso associated with hip-hop. Black and white are the main colors on our DVD cover however we have the name of the artist and song in bright purple. We did this to create a large contrast and to catch the eye of the audience.

The magazine advert we produced used lots of forms and conventions by keeping the same theme as in our DVD cover and music video. We used color corrector to add some darkness in some areas to give the advert a grimey feel. There is graffiti on the wall next to the artist to maintain the main theme and conform to the conventions of the genre. There is also a revue from 'UK hip hop' and a release date. The record label is also on the DVD cover so people can connect the artist and song with the with the record label. There is also a contrast in colors in the magazine advert. This is to attract the eye of the reader. This is a convention of magazine adverts as it makes them stand out from the page. However it challenges the conventions as it does not say where you can buy the product and there is no rating.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The combination of our music video and digipak is very effective as you can tell they are all linked. You can tell they are linked as the main theme is applied throughout each product.

The main theme we have used is graffiti as it is a convention of the genre we are doing. There is graffiti in our video, magazine advert, DVD cover and music video. It is important that they are connected as the image of the artist and graffiti will stick in the consumers mind.

However we have not made every aspect identical,For example we have changed the font, location and color in all our products to give each one a peice of individuality. This also means that if a customer does not like the look of the magazine advert they might still be interested when they see the DVD cover.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We have learnt many things from our audience feedback, both positive and constructive.

We have found out that we have matched up our short duration shots with the steady pace of the song. We have also matched the uplifting music with the happy sunny feeling shots. Also in some cases we have matched the lyrics with the visuals well, for example when Jake says 'Bar 1"and 'bar 2' and holds up the corrects amount of fingers. Some motifs that are seen in the videos are several shots of walls with graffiti on and jake signing to the camera. We have also found out that the audience likes it how the screen goes black to match the beat of the song. The changes in location and the short duration shots combine well and were well liked. The use of the fish eye was also well liked.

The main piece of constructing feedback was that the lip syncing needed to be slightly improved. We heard this from several different groups. There could have also been more shots of the artist and less cut always. The performance of the artist could have been more convincing and realistic.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used several forms of new media technologies throughout the productivity of our product. The main one was blogger. We blogged everything we were doing, our future plans and research. This was useful because we could look back at our blog for ideas of what to do. We also blogged our final music video on our blog and people commented on it giving us feedback.

Another piece of technologiy we used was final cut editing software. We used this to edit our video. On this software we were able to add visual effects and alter the color of individual shots. This made our video more interesting and more ttractive to look at.

We used the internet to browse and research the artist, the genre and similar music videos. This helped with our planning as we got ideas from similar videos in the same genre. We were able to use different ideas from several different videos and combine them into one.

For the construction side apart from final cut we used a HD camera. Wewere able to experiment with this and capture a variety of camera shots. This gave our video some variety and kept it interesting for the audience.

Tuesday, 6 December 2011

During the construction of our media product also include magazine adverts and a digipack, the group invested a lot of their time in researching and analysing the hip- hop and urban genre. In our music video, we tried to capture the essence of hip-hop by adding themes such a graffiti into the production. 'Chiddy Bang – Opposite Of Adults', a real music video was analysed by one of the group members and the video was found to have similar ideas and motifs that we were searching for, for our own product. WE took the idea of this video and refined the concept to match our intentions for our own video.

In regards to our choice of style, we wanted to formulate a design that had not been demonstrated before. One idea came to us in the form of an album cover. We developed a template CD on Photoshop and played around with the placement of the title of the song along with the band name. I converged both the band name and title on to the CD template but it was perceived to lack any real strength within our style. We reverted back to conforming within the hip-hop genre. Both our digipack and magazine advert incorporated graffiti and a mildly dirty setting. I thought the picture for our magazine advert worked in conjunction with our genre.

How effective is the combination of your main product + ancillary texts?

The video relied heavily on the genre chosen which also meant that our magazine ad. and digipack also had to emulate the same theme. We had many problems pursuing the theme of hip-hop for the digipack largely because our ideas were too closely matched to the researched digipacks. The final digipack combined two ideas. A member of our group hand-drew a cartoon version of a hip-hop artist which, when completed, was ideal for our main video. It showed a great response to the themes of our video and also conformed to the conventions of hip-hop but added our own style.

Our magazine advert, in my opinion, wasn't quite as effective. True enough, it collaborated well within the theme of urban music but the image used was not strong enough to make a direct impact on the whole make-up of our media production. The colours lacked vibrancy, though this was due to lack of time on photoshop. It still worked in conjunction with hip-hop, we needed a more focused display image on the advert.

What have you learnt from your audience?

We received feedback from the group u1-44. Many pros were extracted from the response off u1-44.

'Good variation of shots ' along with with, 'nice effects' and 'good lip syncing'. The most useful and settling comment was, 'The skateboarding gave a good rest from the singing.' This comment was useful because after applying the skating onto our video, we were concerned that it looked too much like a skate video and less like a music video, so this was encouraging.

The cons to our video were expected. 'Maybe more locations', and 'more lip syncing'. These comments were finally anticipated. The group knew that the lip syncing was an issue. The song chosen was very fast and we had difficulty learning the song. We received advice from u1-44, who told us that we could use particular cuts and transitions which would mask any mistakes with the lip syncing. Once we completed all the jump-cuts, the video started to look more promising.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction + research + planning + evaluation stages?

Media technologies were used to our advantage throughout the composition of our media production. The employment of photoshop and final cut was imperative to the make-up of our video. In the very beginning, photoshop proved exceedingly difficult. After much perseverance, a learning curve was established and my skills on photoshop improved. I have had little to do with final cut other than ideas to help with the process of the video. I was only able to perform simple tasks when it came to editing. When it came to the challenging parts of final cut, I would relay my ideas and comment to the group and then go onto blogger, a website designed to track our progress, and post blogs. Research, analysis and general activity from the group were all written on blogger.